Economics

What has the Fed done to our money?

Before the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, the price level in the US enjoyed a slight decline over time even while employment was healthy and production high. Prices start to rise when the Fed is established. When FDR effectively untethered the Fed from a real gold standard in 1933, the dollar decline accelerated. The dollar fell off the cliff, though, when Nixon untethered it completely from any connection with gold in 1972. You can also see a blip when Lincoln printed greenbacks. And of course there is no separating money-printing from wars. Taxpayers are rarely willing to pay for wars with real money so their governments borrow and leave them on the hook. With the advent of the Fed, taxation by inflation was an even stealthier way to stick taxpayers with the cost of war: just print the money you need and let the price level rise on the poor wage-earner while owners of assets ride the wave.
And if you think that chart looks bad – notice it does not include Ben Bernanke’s nearly 6-fold increase in “high-powered” money, M1, which is slated to exceed $4 trillion by year-end. This money hasn’t been multiplied by banks yet – most of it is being held at interest as excess reserves with the Fed or being played with in proprietary trading (e.g., the London Whale). If banks start to lend at anywhere near normal levels, they will multiply the money supply by several times – that’s M3 & that’s when inflation will hit.The shaded area is the money Ben Bernanke has been printing.The green shaded area is all the money in circulation. Because the banks are holding excess reserves and haven’t been lending (and multiplying) the money Bernanke’s been printing, inflation hasn’t gone up. When banks start to lend, M3 will skyrocket.

What do banks like?

Foreign bankers began to get a chokehold on the American taxpayer during the Civil War, but really got a grip after the Fed was established in 1913.A century of interest payments…the Federal Reserve was established in 1913.

My seven-year-old was doing a class project on Lewis & Clark. One of the questions each student had to answer about his or her historical subject was how much a gallon of milk cost during their lifetime. It was hard to find a chart of historical price levels, probably because it’s so crazy looking. I finally found one at a teacher’s resource website. The price level is almost flat throughout the 19th century. Price levels actually go down a little while employment levels go up. After 1900 things change. The Fed is created in the early 20th century and, more important, the gold window is closed by Nixon in 1971. The impact is stunning. The steep curve you see is the Fed / govt / banking cartel stealing the people’s money. Here’s what it looks like & to hear some great dialogue on the subject, here is the podcast of today’s show.
Monica Perez Show July 28, 2013, Hour 1
Monica Perez Show July 28, 2013, Hour 2

The plight of the anti-austerity crowd in the PIIGS countries often loses my sympathy when I notice that the most vociferous and violent protestors seem to be students against cuts in university subsidies. If there is one “entitlement” that has no moral basis whatsoever, in my opinion, it is this one, yet these free-riding students are the most self-righteous. I pity many of the people who are dependent on the bankrupt systems they grew up in, sometimes through no fault of their own. These include it’s-too-late-to-start-over Social Security dupes, already-sick Medicare recipients and I-paid-into-Unemployment-for-years dolees.
Professional students, however, are not on my sympathy list. I have come to believe that higher education is not really serving the social purpose these angry, marching students seem to base their sense of righteousness on. That is, higher education is not simply the great equalizer, the path on which the have-nots can learn the secrets of the haves and enter their ranks based not on birth but on merit. Today’s higher education is not intended simply to illuminate the minds of the children of the ignorati with crucial facts, critical thinking and the art of argument–doing that really would give the ruling classes a run for their money!

In reflecting on Paul Krugman’s seemingly 100% record of supporting state intervention as exemplified in my last post, I recall having formerly wondered why economists overwhelmingly support State-based economic views and rarely support free market views.

This summer has me running in all directions, so I haven’t been able to post much. My apologies for that, however, as luck would have it, my sister Booie wanted to share some thoughts on Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bill recently passed by Congress….

When England tried to place the colonies under the monetary control of the Bank of England, many in America were strongly opposed. This was one of the factors leading to the Revolutionary War. Nevertheless, the First Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791, thanks to the machinations of Alexander Hamilton, in line with Northern mercantile interests. In exchange for support by the agrarian South for the bank, Hamilton agreed

Presidential Campaign
I gave up awhile ago on the notion that Democrats vs. Republicans was a battle between social democracy on one side and free market capitalism on the other. Having witnessed the great compromise in which both parties have come together in a Liberal-Fascist Center, I realize that yes, there is a battle between the two parties, but it is one over turf rather than ideology. It reminds me more of the Genoveses vs. the Gambinos than a representative government.
This total acceptance that the politicians are like mobsters and us voters are schlubs there for the shakedown makes it almost impossible for me to even listen to politicians’ BS stump speeches anymore, but I couldn’t resist tuning in to the latest Joe Biden Show. I played the audio Saturday night, but here you can see the fire in his eyes (must have taken a lot of practicing in the mirror to get “resentment” just right.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1o-CApj1v4]
Can you believe this guy? He’s telling middle class Ohoians he understands them by telling them he wants them to buy a house and go to college. Sorry, Uncle Joe, they fell for that one already! Now their houses are underwater and their grown kids are back at home. The American Dream is NOT a mortgage and a school loan!
The real Joe Biden said this recently at a Democratic fundraiser where he was sucking up to former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley: ”I never had an interest in being a mayor ’cause that’s a real job. You have to produce. That’s why I was able to be a senator for 36 years.” It’s funny ’cause it’s true! Biden was elected senator at the age of 29 and never looked back!

Does social power mismanage banking-practice in this-or-that special instance–then let the State, which never has shown itself able to keep its own finances from sinking promptly into the slough of misfeasance, wastefulness and corruption, intervene to “supervise” or “regulate” the whole body of banking-practice, or even take it over entire.-Albert Jay Nock, 1935

Nothing irritates me more than a government-created problem that prompts cries for more government action. A great example of this is the horrible crises, fiscal and monetary, caused in Europe by socialism and central banking, respectively. George Soros and so many others respond to the European Debt Crisis with cries for greater political union and more central government control in Europe. Historical examples of government growth in the wake of government injustice include the response to bans on unionization with laws unfairly favoring unions, or the response to government-mandated segregation with laws that infringe on private property rights under the false guise of pursuing racial justice. (Want racial justice? End the Drug War.)
The latest example of this maddening phenomenon is, generally speaking, the constant demand for more regulation of the financial sector, and specifically, calls for more regulation of trading in the wake of JP Morgan’s recent losses. The fact is, like coal mining, oil drilling and nuclear power, the financial sector is one of the most highly regulated industries in the history of humanity, yet calamities that bring us to the brink of physical, financial and planetary destruction seem to be occurring in these fields at an accelerating pace.

The show this week was great! Thanks to callers and listeners alike. Who knew the European Debt Crisis could be so much fun? To tell you the truth, the truth is so horrible that ya gotta laugh at it or you’d cry! Central economic control and the socialist state are as much a failure in Europe as they were in Russia and North Korea, and as I’m sure we will find, in China, yet Europeans continue to double down by betting again on socialism (in France) and communism (in Greece) in the elections of last week. What are they crazy? (Actually, maybe they are: check out my video preview of the show and the article I reference in that post: 40% of Europeans are reported to suffer mental illness!)European Debt Crisis
If you haven’t been following the European Debt Crisis, the upshot is that the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece & Spain) are already effectively bankrupt and other countries, including France, are not far behind. Despite this, France replaced it’s “conservative” President Nicolas Sarkozy with a socialist, Francois Hollande, as Hollande promised to spare the French people austerity and still somehow spare them bankruptcy. I don’t even think Hollande believes this is possible, but he will raise taxes in a last ditch effort to placate the masses that he’s doing everything he can to get them their free lunch.Austerity vs. Liberalization
Frankly, although I am the most fiscally conservative person you could imagine (I think government expenditure should be $0!) I don’t think the austerity they are talking about in Europe would work anyway.

My favorite Austrian economist (actually, he‘s German!) is Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Here he is giving a lecture in Brazil (the intro is in Portuguese but his lecture is in English) about private law society. If you enjoy this, you should consider listening to his lectures on CD–they are a joy for the anarcho-capitalist and the anarcho-curious alike! For a taste of Hoppe, check out my review of his book Democracy: the God that Failed.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUL764U5-h4&feature=related]

Below is the youtube video of Ron Paul guest hosting on CNBC’s Sqawk Box earlier this week. The whole thing was great watching and worth the time. At one point, Dr. Paul is debating with a guest, Yale Professor Stephen Roach (beginning at 10:27). Dr. Paul claims that the dollar has lost 97% of its value since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913 and Professor Roach says that it is untrue and irresponsible of Dr. Paul to claim such a thing. Dr. Paul’s example was the price of gold, which Professor Roach says is irrelevant. I decided to give Dr. Paul a little back-up. Check out this chart of general U.S. price levels from 1800 to 1999 and see for yourself.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG2uDf2F3cA&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

On the show Saturday night I played a clip from Elizabeth Warren describing her vision of America, which is based on a socialist conception of government. Little did I know, Ron Paul responded to this very same clip on ABC News awhile back.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7otK5NsuA4k]
As an added bonus, here’s a video Eric Bigelow sent me suggesting Ron Paul might be a voluntarist–I think he may be specifically an anarcho-capitalist because he was close to the original anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoUrrlbDoVs&feature=player_embedded]
I mentioned my theory that his dad was an anarcho-capitalist to Rand Paul. He did NOT say I was right! Hear my version of the story!